Philippe Legrain

France’s draft plan to ban on wearing the burqa would involve a fine of €150 for wearing the full veil, Le Monde reports. Anyone forcing a woman to wear a full veil faces up to a year in prison and a €15,000 fine. Meanwhile, Belgium’s draft law would make it a crime to wear clothing […]

As the era of the dark side recedes a little, my sense of the looming reality is as follows. The men who ordered a man tied to a chair, doused in water, and chilled to hypothermia so intense he had to be rushed to emergency medical care, the men who presided over at least two […]

Simon Jenkins on Britain’s illiberal and senseless drugs policy: Leaving ecstasy in class A on the grounds that "there is no such thing as a safe dose" is public stupidity. On this basis there is no safe alcoholic drink or cigarette. There is no safe tree, no safe ladder and, according to Smith, no safe […]

The British government wants to create a database that would keep track of everyone’s calls, emails, texts and internet use. Sir Ken Macdonald, the former director of public prosecutions, who has firsthand experience of working with intelligence and law enforcement agencies, told the Guardian: The tendency of the state to seek ever more powers of […]

Damian Green and I don’t see eye to eye on immigration, but I find his arrest, questioning and the search of his home and office by counter-terrorism police outrageous. According to the BBC, police suspect the Conservative immigration spokesman of “conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office” and “aiding and abetting, counselling or procuring […]

This year’s Privacy International survey put Britain bottom of the European league for surveillance and civil intrusion. In his last column for the Sunday Times, Simon Jenkins urges us all to fight to defend freedom against government encroachment: Never was the adage of Louis Brandeis, the US justice, more relevant: free men are naturally alert […]